People are idiots. Yes, I realize I just posted about use of language and how I only direct it at myself. Seems I might need to eat my words from a prior post, but I don’t care.
I understand that people don’t know what to say to people like me, especially when they learn about my history of trauma, and, especially, the type. It’s ugly. Not easy to look at or acknowledge. Imagine how hard it was to endure. When these things are brushed into the darkness, we know what happens. The mean people get a toe hold. The thing is, my trauma trumps your awkwardness about it. That might sound crass, but it’s true. It’s not like I’m out there waving it around, either. But sometimes it comes up and that’s when a person’s true colors shine through.
Usually what happens is people stare at me, eyes get big like a goldfish, and then the head tips. Eyebrows squeeze together. You know the expression; it oozes awkwardness. Part of the face, usually the eyes, look confused as if the brain is stuck in reboot mode with no ability to convey a singular, correct emotion to a person who has lived through an acid bath. In an instant, their discomfort becomes my issue. Eyebrows and forehead are scrunchy. It’s a distorted mess. A slightly upturned mouth indicates an attempt to be positive and chipper. Maybe. I’m not sure. I do know that it is highly insulting. It is socially unacceptable to stare or make perplexed faces at someone with a physical malady, so why is OK to do with someone that suffers from the mental health variety?
Anyway, then the doozy always follows. “Well, you are so strong” or “you have accomplished so much in your life” or “you are an amazing mother to your children” or, the best one, “think of all the positives that have happened in your life.” I’ve also gotten a, “well, look at you! You go, girl!” Sure all these things are true. I am strong…survival required it. I have accomplished a lot…because I had no choice. I am a pretty decent mom…because I refuse to pass along the generational suffering. Yes, there have been a lot of positives in my life…because I have worked my ass off to put myself in situations far different from my childhood. All of these strengths are the byproduct of immense suffering at the hands of the people that were supposed to protect me.
Think of all the positives? That is the statement of someone who is emotionally stunted on a monumental level. Essentially, its a nice way to say forget your suffering. Don’t let it define you. Don’t acknowledge it. Move forward. These comments are nothing more than a way to brush atrocities under the rug so that those, who have never been abused or experienced serious, life-altering trauma, can have a few moments of not feeling awkward. This is yet another way trauma survivors are screwed in life. It’s hard enough to acknowledge our suffering, own it, and not let it own us. You don’t get to brush it under the rug, thank you very much. It’s a bunch of crap.
And the, “you go girl” comment nearly put me in jail. You go girl?!?! Being abused is not a right of passage, and sure as hell isn’t a homecoming dress fitting, either. You go girl. My God.
The price I paid, years of abuse, torment, second guessing myself, and physical maladies…was it worth it? Sure, I am strong today, but the price I paid to get here was steep. I was robbed of my childhood, was forced to grow up long before my time, saw and endured horrible things. Was it worth it? No. I can tell you, unequivocally, no. It’s not worth it.
I have friends and peers that are also strong, good parents, have positive aspects to their lives, and are accomplished. Yet, they didn’t have to grow up in a meat grinder. They were offered the relative luxury of a painfully acceptable, ordinarily dysfunctional family life. Me? Again…meat grinder, and yet we both end up at the finish line of “successful” adulthood, measured by the same societal standards. But, because we arrived at the same destination, at roughly the same time, the circumstances of my journey are somehow tolerable.
I wonder, why is the price I paid along the way dismissed as acceptable? Is it because I’m a statistical anomaly and ended up with a family, a home, 2 kids, 2 dogs, and a 2-car garage? Because, had I ended up like countless other abused kids – on drugs, pregnant, a criminal, on welfare, and the list goes on – my existence and downfall blamed on my upbringing. But watch any of us actually make something of ourselves and our circumstances miraculously become tolerable. It’s as if the price anyone pays is determined solely upon how others normatively perceive our social location. This is the highest form of relativism and it’s disgusting. Society is really screwed up.
Please. For the love of God. Stop with the tired old tropes. If you cannot look at someone who has suffered and say, simply, “that must have been very hard” then you need to STFU. Anything else that comes out of your mouth feels like a thinly veiled attempt to justify it all, when there was no justification that can make any of it acceptable. You say these things for your own comfort, so you can look away from the gross underbelly of life. Nothing you can say will make it better. Nothing you say will make it go away.
But everything you say matters.
